• Question: do casino games have patterns

    Asked by anon-187162 to Stewart, Miriam, Marton, Laura, Kathryn, David on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Stewart Martin-Haugh

      Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      Yes! Unfortunately the casinos know about this and don’t want to lose money. Take a roulette wheel – it should be 50/50 red and black:
      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Roulette_casino.JPG/1280px-Roulette_casino.JPG
      but actually there’s one or two additional green numbers. Whether you bet on red or black, land on green and you still lose. This shifts the odds towards the casino, so they win something like 52% of the time instead of 50/50.

      Calculating odds in gambling was actually really important for science – it started the theory of probability and statistics, which we now use to figure out whether e.g. different medical operations are safer. And you can also use random numbers (like those you get from roulette) to calculate things in physics, biology and chemistry. This is called the Monte Carlo method after a famous casino.

    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 15 Nov 2018:

      Yes most of them have patterns, that’s why it is possible to cheat at most of them. Only some are completely based on luck.

      Casinos know about the patterns and that’s why they often watch for people who are trying to ‘count cards’ or otherwise work out the patterns and throw them out if they’re winning too much. There have been some great films on people trying to play casinos for lots of money using the patterns. There is a 2008 movie called ’21’ which is a great film about counting cards for Blackjack.

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